The hallmark of all tyrannies, dictatorship or oligarchy, is the use of the power of government to guarantee that those in power stay there. A corollary to this is the politicalization of the criminal justice system. When speaking out against or peacefully opposing the will of the ruling party is branded treason, when opposition leaders are framed for crimes by the intelligence service, when troublemakers are arrested and “held on suspicion” indefinitely, then you have a tyranny. That’s why our Constitution lists so many things that the government is explicitly forbidden to do, like ex post facto laws and bills of attainer: We have the example of the worst British monarchs and the Commonwealth era to show what happens when such things are allowed. That’s why such things as the status of detainees is so worrisome; it’s a “camel’s nose in the tent” issue.
Alas, the one thing most likely to turn the US into a dictatorship is also highly likely to occur in the next 10-15 years: the explosion of a nuclear weapon in an American city. If that happens, you’ll see the creation of a federal anti-nuclear authority, and a Constitutional amendment empowering it to do ANYTHING necessary to prevent another nuclear catastrophe. Secret arrests (since you can’t tip off the terrorists that one of their agents has been captured), limitless search and seizure powers, blanket gag orders to the media, preventive detention, conspiracy statutes bordering on collective guilt, torture, secret trials with anonymous witnesses- the whole nine yards.
After that, it would simply be a matter of criminalizing dissent and using the above powers to make it stick. Banning elections would be too provocative, but you could arrange for the ruling party to be re-elected decade after decade.
Well, back to the OP, you need to start by creating the sheep (not counting the existing sheep, of whom there are plenty).
Spend some years on P-R campaigns to build an Us-versus-Them mindset.
“We” think government is a crowd of unethical bureaucrats there to take advantage of their power; and government’s real basis is military force (it’s not formed by citizens uniting for the common good, and it’s not based on the consent of the governed).
The government picks on “us”, and it’s due to “them” and “their” ideas.
“We” feel victimized by “them”. “We” feel moral, not like “them”. “We” believe in a number of things that have a strong gut resonance. “We” would be glad to see “them” put in their place.
It’s rarely stated, but apparent in many P-R examples, that leadership is more important than rule of law.
During this campaign, you can count on “them” making enough errors IRL to feed the mindset.
The polarization increases in intensity. Then “we” get into a position where we can use our power to increase our power.
Then all that’s left is the details of making the change.
Moving away from the incredibly hypothetical (not to mention monumentally stupid) OP, realistically, it would take pretty much the same thing it took for Germany - a tremendous economic depression (on scales the dot-com bubble burst couldn’t dream of achieving) and a charismatic and successful leader. A foreign opposition movement would help.
I guess you can draw parallels between Hitler and FDR. Both rose to power at the same time in similar conditions (things being rather worse on Hitler’s end, but none too peachy for FDR). Now, Hitler had his dictatorship planned from early on. FDR (we assume) never aspired beyond the presidency, but he is probably the closest thing modern America has seen to either a dictatorship or a monarchy. While he certainly had his detractors, the man ruled America for over a decade with sweeping, revolutionary changes. Desperate action for desperate times. Once WWII broke out (on the US side), I think FDR could have declared himself termporary ruler over all, and lived out his life as a dictator. But America would have resumed democracy after that, as his life was unfortunately and the war was blessedly short.
One thing it would take would be a Constitutional Convention, at which point basically everything can be thrown out the window.
Frankly, I think America is too big to be a dictatorship. At some point, it would break down into some decentralization of power and eventual civil war.
Actually, the question I was trying to ask does have a factual answer, and Tapioca Dextrin provided it. I wanted to know what it would take to turn the US, legally, into a dictatorship (meaning, well, non-democracy, no power held by the common population). I assumed that this would require either abolishing the Constitution, and then I was curious as to how you would do that and if there is even a mechanism in place for doing it, or creating a rather radical amendment to the same effect, and then I was curious as to how quickly that could be done given complete cooperation by everyone.
While the real-life scenarios are interesting in their own way, they’re outside the scope of my question, which was clearly set in an alternate universe.
